An example of a specific act done by Preventively Suspended Mayor Rama before he was suspended and now undone by Acting Mayor Garcia, who has substituted Mike’s decision with Raymond’s own.
Can Rama legally undo what Garcia did? The mayor, upon his return to office, may seek the ordinance’s repeal through his allies in the City Council. Even if he musters enough votes though that may take longer than the “re-filing” of the Rama-vetoed ordinance did.
Remember the ordinance granting the Cebu City Council the power to investigate “in aid of legislation” and power of subpoena and contempt?
Last January 19, 2024, then Mayor Michael L. Rama returned the ordinance to the City Council with his direct veto, declaring it as “ultra vires” or outside the local legislature’s authority and “prejudicial to public welfare.” That was long before Rama’s six-month preventive suspension ordered by the Ombudsman on May 2.
Wednesday, August 21, the City Council was informed by the secretariat that the ordinance (now numbered 2748, formerly #2673), authored by Councilor Mary Ann de los Santos was No. 2 in the list of resolutions and ordinances that were approved by Acting Mayor Raymond Alvin Garcia. De los Santos in effect revived the ordinance by a resolution.
SAME ORDINANCE. The ordinance that A.M. Garcia signed into law is the same ordinance, word for word, punctuations and all, that the City Council approved in December 2022, the mayor vetoed last January 2024, and Councilor de los Santos revived in June 2024. “No minor or major change (from the vetoed ordinance to the re-filed and approved ordinance),” the councilor told me Wednesday. She revived it “exactly as it was approved by the Sanggunian in December 2022.”
In effect, proponents of the ordinance and the rest of the City Council nullified PSM Rama’s veto, which they had failed to shoot down when Rama was the sitting mayor, but have now done so, during Rama’s suspension and exile from City Hall, thus reviving and sending aloft the measure, alive and enforceable, by de los Santos’s grit and persistence and the grace of the acting mayor.
POWERS THE SANGGUNIAN HAS GIVEN ITSELF. Under the ordinance, the City Council will have the power: (1) To conduct “an investigation in aid of legislation” through the City Council en banc or through its committees on complaint filed with it or on its own initiative. (2) To punish disobedience of a subpoena issued by the City Council en banc or an authorized committee by “charging” the offender with “contempt pursuant to the Rules of Court.”
The mayor’s veto argued that no provision of the 1987 Constitution or the Local Government Code expressly grants local legislative bodies the power to subpoena, oversight powers, and contempt powers. De los Santos’ ordinance argued that the power to issue subpoena ad testificandum to witnesses and subpoena duces tecum for production of documents is “impliedly granted” from the “statutory grant of delegated legislative power.”
SC BACKS RAMA LEGAL STAND. Mayor Rama’s veto, at least on the legal aspect, may have found support from the Supreme Court’s 1987 ruling in Negros Oriental II Electric Cooperative vs Sangguniang Panlungsod of Dumaguete City, which laid down the principle that “delegated power cannot be delegated.” The power of contempt, the SC said, cannot be implied from the Sanggunian power to legislate. And this: Local legislative bodies cannot be like Congress, which is “sui generis” or a class by itself.
The ordinance proponents, more especially the lawyers in the City Council—including the acting mayor who’s the elected vice mayor and also a lawyer—appear to be undaunted by the jurisprudence on the legal issue.
CONCESSION TO JUDICIAL NATURE. The ordinance, the proponents said in its “whereas” section, would be an “express grant” to the Sanggunian as the subpoena is “judicial in character” and thus would enable the local legislature “to carry on its mandate of enacting ordinances and approving revolutions... for the general welfare” of the city and its inhabitants.
That may appear to be an admission that being judicial in character, the power of subpoena and contempt must be expressly granted to the Sanggunian. The question could be: Does the local legislature meet the requirement by expressly giving itself the said power? That would be patently self-serving. Should the power not be granted by the Constitution and/or the national legislature, not by the local legislative body?
Aside from that seeming admission in the “whereas” provision on the judicial nature of subpoena and contempt, the ordinance also imposes a curb on the power to punish contempt by requiring that violators will be “charged” pursuant to the Rules of Court.
NO DIRECT, AUTOMATIC PUNISHMENT. Councilor de los Santos confirmed to me that the Council will not directly punish disobedience and the City Council has to go to court if it finds a violation of the subpoena. Councilor Rey Gealon, chairman of the committee on laws, answering my inquiry, also said: “(file) charges in court, not automatic punishment for disobedience.”
That, even as the ordinance lays down its own penalty, not what the judge determines under court rules: fine of not more than P5,000 or imprisonment of not more than one year or both, according to the court’s discretion.
So, under the just-approved ordinance, the City Council will have direct power to issue subpoenas to summon witnesses and secure documents but won’t have power to directly punish violators for contempt; on the City Council’s complaint, the court will determine cause for punishment, according to the penalty set in the ordinance. Is that right?
CHALLENGE IN COURT. One may not be sure, for now. It might take an actual challenge in court to the ordinance before its legal boundaries can be ascertained. Councilors who are lawyers—such as Councilor Gealon, whose committee reviewed and tweaked the ordinance before it was brought on the floor—earlier indicated they are trying to test the waters, if not plumb depths, of the legal issue.
Or it might not come to court litigation. The suspended mayor might be able to cause the repeal of the ordinance upon his return to office and before the City Council starts on a spree of investigating, issuing subpoenas, and suing.
[To come: The City Council’s power to investigate under the de los Santos ordinance]